Super Mario is one of the most iconic characters in gaming, and while he's appeared in all manner of games — from sports and racing titles to his favoured running-and-jumping style adventures — I never expected to see him wielding a rifle and taking cover in strategic combat scenarios.

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is a game made up of so many unlikely factors that on paper it sounds like a complete mess. It's being made by Ubisoft, not Mario's famously protective owners at Nintendo. It mixes the squeaky-clean Mushroom Kingdom crew with the lewd and incredibly loud Rabbids. It eschews any running and jumping for turn-based shooting, upgradeable weapons and strategy.

Despite all this though, the most unlikely part is that it works, and works well. Playing Kingdom Battle at the E3 expo in Los Angeles last week, I was somewhat surprised to find a game that looks beautiful, plays like a hyperactive XCOM, and feels genuinely respectful of both franchises while exploring a game type neither has touched before.

"As we're big fans of [Mario], we wanted to not fall into the trap of trying to do a copycat of something that exists, says Xavier Manzanares, the game's lead producer.

"So we took references of games that we like, but also we brought something different".

Commanding a motley crew that includes Mario, Peach, Luigi, Yoshi and four profoundly disturbing Rabbids that are dressed up like the familiar heroes, players need to keep their characters in an advantageous position on the battlefield to take down enemies while avoiding being shot, smashed or otherwise destroyed.

There are some familiar genre tropes in place — for example a character is safe behind full cover and has a 50 per cent chance to be hit behind half cover — but in line with both the Mario and Rabbids franchises this is a very streamlined, accessible and active take on strategy combat.

"Instead of planning ahead seven, six, eight, ten moves, it's more about reacting to what is happening", Manzanares says, pointing to an enemy type that will counter-attack when hit even if it's not their turn. 

A touch of randomness also keeps the game from being too analytical. "Super attacks" can inflict statuses such as burn, freeze and bounce depending on the weapon being used, but they only have a percentage chance of occurring on any given attack. Strategy is still very important, but so is staying flexible. This is reinforced by elements like warp pipes and team-ups that let characters move much further than they could on their own, techniques that can be used by player and enemy alike.

Work on the game — which is being made by Ubisoft's Paris and Milan studios — began in 2014 when the team took a prototype to Japan to show Shigeru Miyamoto, Mario's creator and Representative Director at Nintendo. Miyamoto was apparently surprised and delighted, given the project his blessing, but he had an understandable request.

"We had the weapons in the first prototype — or some weapon — and Mr Miyamoto was really into it because he thought it was really action driven", Manzanares says.

"But he had one rule: it needs to not look like a believable weapon".

Even though Mario is used to crushing foes beneath his feet, representations of real-world violence would not be the best fit. Kingdom Battle avoids this with colourful weapons that shoot flashy energy beams, and enemies that float away when defeated rather than dying in a heap.

"When you defeat [a Rabbid] he's teleported back to the hub as a white Rabbid. And our hub evolves, because white Rabbids go up they start to construct stuff. So in fact you save the Rabbids by defeating them", Manzanares says.

Ultimately it remains to be seen how successful the game will be in marrying its various disparate ideas and elements. While the battles I played were a lot of fun, an idea of what players will be doing between fights — not to mention how satisfying it will be to upgrade weapons and unlock new skills as the game progresses — is harder to determine.

If nothing else though, the game has a solid footing and the team has convinced me the melding of Mario and Rabbids can be interesting — just look at the comically self-obsessed Rabbid Peach or the monstrous and dim-witted Rabbid DK — so I'm keen to see the full extent of the crossover. The way Manzanares tells it, Nintendo has handed over quite a lot of creative licence.

"When we started to talk to Nintendo, first we had Mario, Yoshi, Luigi and Peach, and side characters like Toad and Toadette. But they were very keen to see where we wanted to push the use of different characters", he says.

"So then we started to talk about Donkey Kong, mixing a Rabbid with Donkey Kong. Piranha plant? We're going to mix a piranha plant with a Rabbid, and it became a mid-boss. We're going quite far, but I'm not going to reveal more because we have some surprises".

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is out for Nintendo Switch on August 29.

The author travelled to Los Angeles as a guest of Ubisoft.